So High, So Low, So Wide
by Catherine Spark
Summary: When the Eleventh Doctor's timey-wimey detector goes ding, he and Clara end up in a strange, derelict house in modern-day Leicester. It is populated by a young girl named Grace, and a seemingly endless supply of baby tortoises. What is going on?


**CHAPTER 1**

The TARDIS is flying through the vortex – very unstably. It's all the Doctor and Clara can do to stay upright. Suddenly there's a _bang_, and both of them are thrown to the floor.

"What the heck was that?" yells Clara, trying to sit up. The Doctor, who has already righted himself, hits a button on the TARDIS console, and there is another resounding BOOM.

"Don't worry!" he cries, "I very nearly got something very wrong, but I cunningly fixed it by being cunning!" He pulls a lever and with another_ bang_, all movement ceases. The two of them stand there, panting, picking their wits up off the floor. The Doctor grins. Since flying with him Clara has learned that grinning can hide a lot in his case. "I set the wibbly lever to send us backwards in time but it jammed on so to stop us accelerating backwards to the beginning of the universe – which is a fun place to visit if you're into that sort of thing but you don't want to drop off the end of it by coming at it too fast – I threw a randomiser switch which overrode the wibbly lever and set us down here."

"And 'here' is…?"

He checks the console. "Earth. 1980. England. Leicester."

"You know, for a randomised machine your TARDIS does end up in not-too-long-ago England quite a lot."

He shrugs. "Cookies. Remembers where I've been and prioritises those places. So not truly random, but random pick of the prioritised locations. I should delete my cookies soon and have a _truly _random adventure. Anyway, can you hear that?" He cocks his head. She hears it, too. A dinging noise coming from a corner. He springs across the room. "Hope there aren't any eggs or chickens in the nearby vicinity…"

"Why?"

He holds up a device that looks like an early hand-held video cassette recorder. "My timey-wimey detector. It's going ding, so there must be stuff. Wanna take a look?" He gestures towards the door with his head, and gives her that piercing gaze, daring her to say no.

She sets her chin, and matches his stare with a defiant smile. "Try and stop me!"

When they step out the TARDIS they find themselves shivering on a grey, windy March morning. They're in a dilapidated old English garden, with ivy crawling up the high stone walls. A large, moss-covered fountain stands at the far end of the garden. Its mechanism is no longer working, and the water in its base is covered with a mulch of dead, partially decomposed leaves. A single lamppost pokes over the wall, and oak trees tower behind it, their crowns seeming to press against the mottled sky.

"Well, it's certainly the right atmosphere for something timey-wimey," remarks the Doctor. He looks round and finds that Clara has wandered over to the base of the fountain.

"Oh, hello…" She bends down to pick something up.

"Clara, be careful!" The Doctor darts over and is surprised when she straightens up, a tiny, newly-hatched baby tortoise cupped in her hands.

"Hello, you!" He puts his finger out to stroke the top of its head, and it snaps at him. "Sorry…" he withdraws it again quickly, and holds both hands up in mock surrender.

"Oh, are they getting out again?" The voice is female, high, and comes from a way off behind them. They turn round to see a young girl running towards them. She's got blonde hair that's tied up in a messy bun, and is wearing kaki jeans, scuffed trainers, a denim jacket open at the front, and a three-quarter-length brown top. The Doctor and Clara are both slightly surprised that she doesn't question them as to who they are or why they are in her garden. Then again, she looks to be in her teens. Early teens.

"Here, give him to me." She sounds flustered, but gives the tortoise a little kiss on the shell as she makes for a battered wooden door leading in to what looks like an old barn round the back of the house. The door looks like a very, very, very old pair of trousers that has been ripped, patched up, ripped again and patched up again. The Doctor and Clara follow her towards it, jogging to keep up with her brisk march.

"Is this what it feels like to be you?" the Doctor whispers to Clara.

"That, plus trying to keep up with everything that's going on at the same time," she whispers back. The Doctor raises his eyebrows – he is fairly confused already, for once, and his confusion doesn't diminish when they enter the barn. The floor is covered with wood chips – the kind you get on the ground in retro playparks. Suspended from the ceiling and hanging low are four wide-brimmed heat lamps. Shallow trays of water are dotted at random intervals, and a series of nest boxes with hay in them stand along one wall. Various leafy greens and fresh vegetables are strewn across the floor, and munching at these are a selection of tortoises – big and small, bright green and dirtier green, faster and slower.

"Er, anybody want to, you know, say hello?" The Doctor's looking distinctly freaked out now. This isn't the normal human behaviour of someone whose garden has been broken into by mistake; when that happens humans are usually scared and thus hostile initially. But it isn't alien behaviour either, and it's certainly not invested enough in their presence to be the behaviour of someone in the know and determined to make enemies of them. And there doesn't seem to be any So what IS going on?

"There you go," says the girl, placing the escapee down. "Better patch up that hole in the door." She grabs a cordless power drill, a handful of screws and a scrap of wood lying on a shelf mounted on another of the walls. As they stare she expertly screws the scrap of wood into place over the hole. "That should stop any more leaks!"

The Doctor cracks. He holds out his hand. "Nice to meet you," he says, deciding to bare-face it. "I'm the Doctor – a nine-hundred-and-something-year-old, time-travelling alien being from the lost planet of Gallifrey. I'm currently in my eleventh incarnation. And this is, Clara, my companion – an impossible girl who's human but scattered throughout time and travels with me in her third and final incarnation. Very nice to meet you."

The girl stares at them for a moment, then smiles. "OK," she says, "I'm Grace." She drops down on her knees beside one of the nesting boxes. She picks out an egg that has a deep crack running through it. "Look! It's hatching!" Sure enough, the crack becomes a flap, and a tiny nose pokes out. She puts it back and checks the other nests.

Now the Doctor is getting kind of irritated. Clara has to bite her lip to stop herself from laughing – this girl is shaking his unshakeable confidence seemingly without even trying. "So who are you?" Clara enquires.

"I'm the tenant here. It's just me and the tortoises."

"I see." Still nothing to go on. "And…is everything all right?"

She shrugs. "Yeah."

"It's just…" breaks in the Doctor, "My timey-wimey detector went ding, so that must mean there's stuff. Interesting actually," he frowns and taps it, "Doesn't seem to be able to boil tortoise eggs. Which is just as well, really. Can you put us up for a night or two?"

Clara gives him a confused, _but-we-have-a-TARDIS _look, which he stills with his hand. So she keeps her mouth shut.

"Sure. If you'll help with the tortoises."

"Chief tortoise-watchers at your service."

"Great. Then right now we're going to keep an eye on all these eggs – they're due to hatch today. And nip to the shops and get me a bag of salad, mini tomatoes, fresh herb leaves and cucumber, would you? I have to get to school. Here, use my card." She hands Clara a bank card, and dashes out the room.


End file.
